The Birth Attendants, as doulas, provide educational, emotional and physical support to incarcerated pregnant and postpartum people that enhance and extend their reproductive choices.
Our non-profit organization educates the community about the struggles and triumphs of all marginalized pregnant and parenting people.
We envision a just and safe world where women are empowered to make choices for themselves and their families, a world where services are directed toward health and well-being and encompass support and restoration for families and communities.
The Birth Attendants is not affiliated with and does not endorse any sect, denomination, institution or religion. Our services are not religiously-based and, though we carry out our advocacy and support services inside the WCCW, we are not affiliated with the Washington State Department of Corrections. We are based in the community and currently function as an independent non-profit.
Awesome!
If folks are interested in helping support groups like this, there’s also the Prison Birth Project based in Western Mass. They do a lot of work around reproductive health—including natal care—with a focus on advocacy and support for birthing parents in prison or recently released. The organization is entirely run by those either formerly in or directly impacted by the PIC. I suggest anyone in Western Mass give them a looksee and participate in any way they can.
October 2011
A few weeks ago, I posted an “introduction” to critical race theory list. Here is a more comprehensive list that includes some postcolonial works as well. This list is incomplete and you might find some authors have competing, if not completely opposing methodologies. This list also includes works that are transnational, as race theory is currently moving towards a politics of globalization and transnationalism.
This list is by no means everything that is out there — but it is a broader list for those who want to read beyond introductory material.
Anderson, Margaret and Collins, Patricia Hill. Race, Class , and Gender: An Anthology
Alcoff, Linda Martin. Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self
Allen, Theodore. The Invention of the White Race
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Ethics of Identity
Baum, Bruce David. The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America
Cheng, Anne. The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief
Cheung, King-Kok. Articulate Silences
Chin, Frank and Chan, Jeffrey Paul. “Racist Love.” Seeing Through Shuck. Ed. Richard Kostelanetz. 65-79.
Chow, Rey. “Sacrifice, Mimesis, and the Theorizing of Victimhood (A Speculative Essay)” Representations 94 (Spring 2006), 131-49.
Cox, Oliver Cromwell. Race: A Study in Social Dynamics
Darity, William A. and Myers, Samuel L. Persistent Disparity: Race and Economic Inequality in the United States Since 1945
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk
Duncan, Patti. Tell This Silence
Eng, David L. and Kazanjian, David. Loss.
Entman, Robert and Rojecki, Andrew. The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks
____. Wretched of the Earth
Feder, Ellen K. Family Bonds: Genealogies of Race and Gender
Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness
Gates, Henry Louis. Race, Writing and Difference
____. The Signifying Monkey
Gilroy, Paul. Against Race
____. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
Glasgow, Joshua. A Theory of Race
Goldberg, David Theo. Anatomy of Racism
____. Racial Subjects: Writing on Race in America
____. The Racial State
Hall, Stuart. “When Was ‘The Post-Colonial’? Thinking at the Limit.” The Post-Colonial Question. ed Ian Chambers and Lidia Curti. 242-260.
Hannaford, Ivan. Race: The History of an Idea in the West
Harris, Michael. Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation
Hardt, MIchael and Negri, Antonio. Empire.
Jordan, Winthrop. White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812
Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment of Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics
Mamdani, Mamhood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
Marx, Anthony W. Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and BrazilMcClintock. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context
Mills, Charles Wade. The Racial Contract
Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime and the Making of Modern Urban America
Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism
Okihiro, Gary et al. Privileging Positions
Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s
Painter, Nell. The History of White People
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism
____. Orientalism
Sheth, Falguni. Toward a Political Philosophy of Race
Skidmore, Thomas. Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought
Spivak, Gayatri. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason
____. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271-31.
____. In Other Worlds
Thiong’o, Ngugi Wa. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
Wright, Richard. Black Power
Now, I definitely have heard with my ears and read about non-AfAm Blacks in the US making it clear that they aren’t African-American. In books or in US media, I always read this interpreted as self-hate, disdain for AfAms, denial, etc. As the daughter of a self-identifying ‘Black’ immigrant, I always felt like there was something else missing (even though I recognize these other factors can and do exist, it’s not THE ONLY reason someone would have to be
defensivecorrective). There’s something that’s clearly not included in the explanation that’s not about denial or opposition.I think Maritza Quinones Rivera sums it up very nicely:
“Being mistaken for African-American, from my perspective, suggests that my Blackness is not derived from my geographical and historical context, but rather it is constructed through the lens of the US mainland’s Black/White racial dichotomy.”
The feeling of having an identity, your identity, monopolized and you don’t have hegemonic power in explaining what it is/means to you.
For me, there is no mistaking because I am African-American, but I am also second generation Panamanian and to have that ignored simply because I’m black is ridiculous and gave me all types of complexes growing up related to myself and my family.
This is how it feels being African American too. When people find out you’re just “regular Black” they stop asking questions. Like there’s no diversity or rich ethnic history of Blackness within the United States. Nobody cares to know if your grandparents speak Gullah or Louisiana Creole or the difference in culture between Blacks who’ve lived Oklahoma Indian Territory versus New England Algonquin tribes.
We’re in a country that can’t figure out slaves came from different places or that the Great Migration happened for a multitude of reasons & included going West as well as North. History, sociology, hell the basic realities of blackness (see all the hair questions that still come up) just aren’t going to register for most people.
September 2011
Thank you for your courage. Thank you for making an attempt to improve the situation in what is now called the United States. Thank you for your commitment to peace and non-violence. Thank you for the sacrifices you are making. Thank you.
There’s just one thing. I am not one of the 99 percent that you refer to. And, that saddens me. Please don’t misunderstand me. I would like to be one of the 99 percent… but you’ve chosen to exclude me. Perhaps it wasunintentional, but, I’ve been excluded by you. In fact, there are millions of us indigenous people who have been excluded from the Occupy Wall Street protest. Please know that I suspect that it was an unintentional exclusion on your part. That is why I’m writing to you. I believe that you can make this right. (I hope you’re still smiling.)
It seems that ever since we indigenous people have discovered Europeans and invited them to visit with us here on our land, we’ve had to endure countless ‘-isms’ and religions and programs and social engineering that would “fix” us. Protestantism, Socialism, Communism, American Democracy, Christianity, Boarding Schools, Residential Schools,… well, you get the idea. And, it seems that these so-called enlightened strategies were nearly always enacted and implemented and pushed upon us without our consent. And, I’ll assume that you’re aware of how it turned out for us. Yes. Terribly.
Which brings me back to your mostly-inspiring Occupy Wall Street activities. On September 22nd, with great excitement, I eagerly read your“one demand” statement. Hoping and believing that you enlightened folks fighting for justice and equality and an end to imperialism, etc., etc., would make mention of the fact that the very land upon which you are protesting does not belong to you - that you are guests upon that stolen indigenous land. I had hoped mention would be made of the indigenous nation whose land that is. I had hoped that you would address the centuries-long history that we indigenous peoples of this continent have endured being subject to the countless ‘-isms’ of do-gooders claiming to be building a “more just society,” a “better world,” a “land of freedom”on top of our indigenous societies, on our indigenous lands, while destroying and/or ignoring our ways of life. I had hoped that you would acknowledge that, since you are settlers on indigenous land, you need and want our indigenous consent to your building anything on our land - never mind an entire society. See where I’m going with this? I hope you’re still smiling. We’re still friends, so don’t sweat it. I believe your hearts are in the right place. I know that this whole genocide and colonization thing causes all of us lots of confusion sometimes. It just seems to me that you’re unknowingly doing the same thing to us that all the colonizers before you have done: you want to do stuff on our land without asking our permission.
‘You have to think of a different kind of menu,’ says Alice [Waters, owner of Chez Panisse and organic Slow Food guru]. ‘You eat dried fruit and nuts. You make pasta sauces out of canned tomatoes … you’re eating different kinds of grains—farro with root vegetables … Turnips of every color and shape! Carrots that are white and red and orange and pink! … Cabbages!’
Basically, you can eat like a fucking Russian peasant, is what she’s saying. I don’t know if that’s what they want to hear in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or Buffalo. And what about the healthy, pure, wholesome, and organic foods that Alice says I should be buying—particularly if I have children? If I’m making an even average wage as, say, a sole-providing police officer or middle manager? Regular milk is about four bucks a gallon. Organic is about twice that. Supermarket grapes are about four bucks a bunch. Organic are six. More to the point, what if I’m one of the vast numbers of working poor, getting by in the service sector? What should I do? How can I afford that?
Asked this question very directly, Alice advises blithely that one should ‘Make a sacrifice on the cell phone or a third pair of Nike shoes.’ It’s an unfortunate choice of words. And a telling one, I think. You know, those poor people—always with their Nikes and their cell phones. If only they’d listen to Alice. She’d lead them to the promised land for sure.
What else should we be doing? Alice says we should immediately spend 27 billion dollars to ensure every schoolchild in America gets a healthy, organic lunch. More recently she added to this number the suggestion that fresh flowers on every lunchroom table might also be a worthwhile idea. This is, after all, ‘more important than crime in the streets. This is not like homeland security—this is actually the ultimate homeland security. This is more important than anything else.’
Which is where Alice really loses me—because, well, for me, as a New Yorker, however quaint the concept, homeland security is still about keeping suicidal mass murderers from flying planes into our fucking buildings. And organic school lunches might be more important to you than crime in the streets in Berkeley—but in the underfunded school systems of West Baltimore, I suspect they feel differently. A healthy lunch is all fine and good—but no use at all to Little Timmy if he gets shot to death on the way to school. In fact, 27 billion for organic food for Timmy seems a back-assward priority right now—as, so far, we’ve failed miserably to even teach him to read. What kind of dreams can a well-fed boy have if he doesn’t even have the tools to articulate them? How can he build a world for himself if he doesn’t know how to ask for—much less how to get—the things he wants and needs? I, for one, would be very satisfied if Timmy gets a relatively balanced slab of fresh but nonorganic meatloaf with a side of competently frozen broccoli—along with reading skills and a chance at a future. Once literate, well read, and equipped with the tools to actually make his way in the world, he’ll be far better prepared to afford Chez Panisse.
As of this writing, not too far from Berkeley, just across the bridge, in San Francisco’s Mission District, they line up every Tuesday for the $1.99 special at Popeye’s Fried Chicken. They don’t stand in the street waiting for forty-five minutes to an hour because it’s particularly healthy chicken, or organic chicken, or conscientiously raised chicken. They do it because it’s three fucking pieces for a dollar ninety-nine. Unless we respect that reality, Alice? We’re lost.
” —Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and People Who Cook
Bourdain devotes an entire chapter of his book to decimating Alice Waters, who has been lauded in a 60 Minutes puff piece as “the Mother of Slow Food” (which is a bullshit claim). He admits that he was perhaps overdoing it when he called her “Pol Pot in a muumuu” in an interview — but only barely (he also called saccharine blonde Semi-Homemade host Sandra Lee “the hellspawn of Betty Crocker and Charles Manson” and called her Kwanzaa Cake “a war crime on television”, so Waters is far from alone). Bourdain selects his targets for a reason, and Waters is a highly suitable stand-in for the growing ranks of white, privileged, socially ignorant eco-food ideological stick-wavers whose contempt for communities of color and for the poor ooze out through their self-righteous evangelism.
In a typical move, Waters wrote an open letter to the newly elected president Obama warning that “the purity and wholesomeness of the Obama movement must be accompanied by a parallel effort in food”. She appointed herself onto an advisory committee to help the Obamas select “a person with integrity and devotion” as White House Chef, adding “I cannot forget the vision I have had since 1993 of a beautiful vegetable garden on the White House lawn” — apparently oblivious that they already had a chef of “integrity and devotion” and a vegetable garden. This, from someone who has boasted that she hasn’t voted since 1966. Nevertheless, the Obamas were cool and invited her to the White House to throw a series of dinners and help expand the garden. As an example of her sustainable, locavorian ways, she flew in big-name chefs from all over the country for a five-hundred-dollar-a-plate gala, as though there are no qualified chefs in Washington fucking DC. This is why I appreciate what Tony Bourdain does. His targets usually deserve it. He’s a linguistic assassin, and sometimes that’s just what’s needed. And yeah, it feels good too. Plus, say what you want but I dig Popeye’s.
(via zuky)
It was at Popeye’s that I discovered what country biscuits are. I doubt I shall ever get enough of them.
Because people seem to not be able to read and comprehend :
1) withdraw and go with a credit union or online bank not charging fees to use your money. That’s NOT a depression style pull out , it’s a MOVE , it is literally taking your business else where. Specifically it is taking your business to a FEDERAL insured bank and sends a message that while you will support your government you will not continue to patronize business that feed of you like vampires. It is also making you a share holder garunteed to partial profits and better rates . For your PERSONAL finances its WIDELY regarded as a better move, especially if you have under 250 grand as all of your money is insured Online banks, deal with the digitization of money. So hello boycotting the recent fees. Why is this garbage again? Oh right cause you stopped reading at the first line.
2) people are starving building infra structure to support them and learning from our forbears is bad how???? Because no one expects this to
Momentary so we should probably assure ways for it’s success now and not later3) so I am not supposed to encourage folks to find and elect candidates that are in THEIR interest around their very economic survival. there’s a civics book I wanna strike you with at some point
4) same about writing letters to CONGRESSMEN. Civic engagement Is crazy now
5) and going to th BILLIONAIRE who has AGREED with this to writing an editorial in the NYT and asking them to elaborate so as to use his fiscal brilliance to point out a way to improve our outlook in a way that will not challenge the current system but the current politics
6) and when you want to do stuff make sure to do it in silence
Yes all garbageCause god forbid we en mass use current systems to go from customers to shareholders and earn MORE money PERSONALLY an create change COLLECTIVELY
I’m
also okay basically since i’m thinking about it
some basic ground rules for allistic folk regarding dealing with/discussing autism and autistic folk:
- minimizing or maximizing someone’s disability kind of makes you a douchebag; if a person does not present in a way that matches your perception of autism, it is far more likely that your perception of autism needs to drastically change than that person needs to “stop faking” — similarly, if a person tells you they are autistic, they do not automatically need to be treated like a small and inept child. that’s degrading and it makes you look like an asshat.
- if an autistic person needs help with something that is directly affected by their autism, they will probably tell you. it is NEVER okay to assume that they need help on the basis that they are autistic. it is NEVER okay to presume yourself the one to help them. part of coping with autism is learning to ask people to clarify, or speak slower, or to repeat themselves. on a similar note, not EVERY difficulty an autistic person has is due to autism. we are PEOPLE, and just as allistic people vary and have difficulties with different things, so do we! “blaming” everything on autism also makes you look like a douche.
- however, if a person did not tell you that they need help, and you discover after the fact that they did — like, say, if they become frustrated and overstimulated, perhaps by surprise or perhaps because they were too embarrassed to tell you — stop. take a moment. don’t let this ONE INSTANCE change your entire perception of this person. don’t let it rule your view of how “inept” they may or may not be. and ask if there is anything you can do to help, or to avoid this situation in the future. basically just be a decent human being and take the time to realize that this person’s mental health is being threatened at the moment, and on TOP of that there’s a stigma beating down on them already. it’s pretty easy to get frustrated in that position.
- if you break out the ableist slurs at this point you’re just an asshole and i don’t want to know you please go to a planet that is not earth; there’s no ground rule for this really you’re just the lord of the douches
- if someone with autism informs an allistic person that something they are doing is ableist in regards to autism, YOU SHOULD LISTEN. do not jump to defend yourself, do not accuse them of attacking you or being over-sensitive, and DO NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES blame their autism and/or tell them that their autism makes them incapable of understanding how a situation could be ableist. THEY are autistic, and that allistic person (even if it happens to be YOU, even if you consider yourself an ally) is NOT. THEY will understand autism and what hurts them as an autistic person better than ANY allistic person on ANY given day, no questions asked.
- basically please just maybe put a little EFFORT into not being a douche. sometimes you have to TRY. i am asking you to do that. please.
From an NAACP email regarding Troy Davis’ funeral tomorrow, October 1:
Many have asked about contributions to the Davis family. Letters of condolence may be sent to “I am Troy Davis,” P.O. Box 2105, Savannah, GA 31407
In lieu of flowers, donations may be mailed to: “I Am Troy Fund,” Capitol City Bank, 339 MLK, Jr., Blvd. Savannah, Georgia 31401
Who will work these fields?
No. Really. Somebody’s going to have to answer that question soon.
If, somehow, we manage to bring monstrously evil agribusinesses like Monsanto to their knees, free up vast tracts of arable land for small, seasonal, sustainable farming, where’s all the new help coming from? Seems to me, we’re facing one of two scenarios. Either enormous numbers of people who’ve never farmed before are suddenly convinced that waking up at five a.m. and feeding chickens and then working the soil all day is a desirable thing. Or, in the far more likely case, we’ll revert to the traditional method: importing huge numbers of desperately poor brown people from elsewhere to grow those tasty, crunchy vegetables for more comfortable white masters. So, while animals of the future might be cruelty-free, which would allow those who can afford to eat them to do so with a clean conscience, what about life for those who will have to shovel the shit from their stalls?
” —Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
I stayed up almost all night last night reading Bourdain’s 330-page screed on food and foodies. Good shit. A little tired today but totally worth it. I love Bourdain’s pound-it-out writing style, which is more “raw” than “medium”, and he has far too much respect for his readers to try any bullshit. It’s not always pretty, it’s not always right, but it always feels like a smart and fallible human being struggling to make something worthwhile out of the messes he’s made and the mess we’re all in.
(via zuky)
FOLEY, Alabama — Many of the 223 Hispanic students at Foley Elementary came to school Thursday crying and afraid, said Principal Bill Lawrence.
Nineteen of them withdrew, and another 39 were absent, Lawrence said, the day after a federal judge upheld much of Alabama’s strict new immigration law, which authorizes law enforcement to detain people suspected of not being U.S. citizens and requires schools to ask new enrollees for a copy of their birth certificate.
Even more of the students — who are U.S. citizens by birth, but their parents may not be — were expected to leave the state over the weekend, Lawrence said.
“It’s been a challenging day, an emotional day. My children have been in tears today. They’re afraid,” he said. “We have been in crisis-management mode, trying to help our children get over this.”
Foley Elementary has the area’s largest percentage of Hispanic students, about 20 percent of its student body.
(via Jack & Jill Politics)
Jesus christ. This makes me sick.
You can’t keep your pet? Really?
~By a Shelter Director
Our society needs a huge “Wake-up” call.
As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all… a “view from the inside” - if you will.
First off, any of you whom have surrendered a pet to a shelter or humane society should be made to work in the “back” of an animal shelter - for just ONE DAY.
Maybe if you saw the life drain from those sad, lost, confused eyes, you’d stop flagging the ads on here and help these animals find homes.
That puppy you just dropped off will most-likely end up in my shelter when it’s no longer a cute little puppy anymore.
Just so you know, there’s a 90% chance that your dog will never walk out back out, once entered in to the shelter system… Purebred or not!
About 25% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays” that come into a shelter are purebred dogs.
The most common excuses: “We’re moving and can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving to that doesn’t allow pets?
Or they say “The dog got bigger than we thought it would”. How big did you think a German Shepherd would get?
“We don’t have time for her”. Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs!
“She’s tearing up our yard”. How about making her a part of your family?
“We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her & we know she’ll get adopted, she’s a good dog”.
Odds are, your pet won’t get adopted & how stressful do you think it is for your pet?
Did you know…
Your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off?
Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog/cat manages to stay completely healthy.
If it sniffles, it is euthanized.
Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with other barking & crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and will cry constantly for you.
If your pet is lucky, there will be enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk.
If not, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of it’s pen with a high-powered hose.
If your dog is big, black or any of the “Bully” breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door.
If your cat is scared and doesn’t act friendly enough, or if it catches a cold (which most of them ‘do’), it will be put to sleep.
Those dogs & cats just don’t get adopted.
In most cases, it doesn’t matter how ‘sweet’ or ‘well behaved’ they are.
If your pet doesn’t get adopted within it’s 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed.
If the shelter isn’t full and your pet is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed it may get a stay of execution, but not for long.
Most dogs get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression.
Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment.
If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because the shelter gets paid a fee to euthanize each animal and making money is better than spending money to take this animal to the vet.
Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”.
First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash.
They always look like they think they are going for a walk… happy, wagging their tails… until they get to “The Room”, every one of them freaks out and puts on the brakes when they get to the door. It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there. It’s strange, but it happens with every one of them.
Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 shelter workers, depending on the size and how freaked out they are.
Then a shelter worker who we call a “euthanasia tech (not a vet)”finds a vein in the front leg and injects a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”.
Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerks.
I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood… the yelps and screams are deafening.
They all don’t just “go to sleep”, sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves.
You see, shelters are trying to make money to pay employee pay checks and then, there’s the board of directors… who need to be paid too!
Consequently, corners are cut, & we don’t spend our funds to tranquilize the animal before injecting them with the lethal drug, we just put the burning lethal drug in their vein and let them suffer until dead.
If it were not a business for profit, we’d do it humanely and hire a licensed vet do this procedure. That way, the animal would be sedated or tranquilized and THEN euthanized.
But to do this procedure correctly would only cost more money… so we don’t necessarily do what is right for the animal, we do what’s expedient so we can continue to make a buck!
Shelters do not have to have a vet perform their euthanasia procedures. Oftentimes, they are untrained personnel administering lethal injections. So… that employee may take 50 pokes with a needle and 3 hours to get inside the vein.
In the end, your pet’s corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer, usually in the back of the building with all of the other animals that were killed. There they will sit until being picked up like garbage.
What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? Or used for schools to dissect and experiment on?
You’ll never know and it probably won’t even cross your mind.
After all, it was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right?!
I hope that those of ou who still have a beating heart and have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head. I deal with this everyday. I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make changes and start educating yourselves, your children, the public. Do the research, do your homework, and know exactly what you are getting into before getting a pet.
These shelters and humane societies exist because people just do not care about animals anymore.
And PLEASE stop breeding!
Animals were not intended to be disposable but somehow that is what they’ve become.
For those of you that care—- please repost this to at least one other Craigslist in another City.
Let’s see if we can get this all around and have an impactI’ve worked for the humane society before and I couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t like how things animals were dealt with at the humane society and I didn’t like how I was getting treated as well. I was told to ignore animals and to act emotionless which is infuriating. I’ve seen way too many horrible things happen to animals as a result of neglect, abuse etc. The shelter that’s dear to my heart is a no-kill animal shelter called D’arcy’s ARC, they only accept neglected, abused and stray animals and sometimes get animals from the humane society. Animals will never be put down their and will live in luxury and will be paid attention to. Please read the above post it’s important. Animals are not disposable.
Ok, a lot of the original stuff is really privligey “i.e WHERE ARE U MOVING THAT DOESN’T ALLOW PETS” or “WELL -I- CAN FIND TIME FOR MY 6 DOGS!”, but ignoring that stuff, this is really moving piece.
I adopted my cat from a no-kill shelter that a few years prior I had done some volunteer work for. People, ALWAYS remember to support your local no-kill shelters! They are constantly in need of resources, and any bit you do can help, and the existence of these shelters are vital to avoid fates such as the ones described above.
And if for any reason you asbolutely must give up your animal companion, please bring it to a no kill shelter if you can.
And if you are choosing to adopt an animal, please pick an older one. Puppies have the highest rate of adoption, where as adult cats have the lowest rate. And adult animals really need the homes. I know, I know, you all want those cute little kittens and puppies, just like how people always want to adopt human infants and not the older humans, but you will be doing a very good thing giving a home to an animal that otherwise might not stand a chance of ever having one when you adopt an adult.
I don’t think it’s especially privilege-y to say that one should be able to take care of a pet if they want one. If you can’t take care of a pet or can’t forsee being able to take care of it in the near future, don’t adopt/buy it.
otherwise they’re just going to be neglected due to lack of funds (or just get a smaller and easier to manage pet)
oh of course, you shouldn’t get an animal companion if you can’t take care of it.
but I was more thinking along the lines of unforseeable circumstances that come up that result in you unable to take care of it where as previosuly you were perfectly able to.
like with the moving thing. of course you should do all you can to find a place you can afford that allows pets. But if you lose your job and the only place you can afford now is some place that doesn’t allow pets, then that’s not exactly your fault, and it’s kinda privlegey to suggest some one in that situation is being careless.
or with the time thing. if some one needs to start taking extra hours to be able to make payments or something, where as previously they were perfectly able to take care of their animals, and then is no longer able to have time for them and the animal is being neglected because of that, that isn’t really soemthing in their control. And just because one person can do it, doesn’t mean everyone can.
I should add that people should do everything they can to make sure their animal can have a home first, like asking their friends, etc, and bringing the animal to a no kill shelther would be best if they absolutely must give it up to a stranger.
but some people might not have a no kill shelter within reach,unfortunately. and they can’t do anything to solve that if it’s the only option they have to give their pet up to it.
Lol people with no sense of compassion (or maybe it’s their imagination that’s lacking?). “Lost your job? House being foreclosed on? The only place you can afford is no-pets and also tiny, but you have a large-breed dog because you weren’t psychic enough to foretell that you were going to lose the big house and ample yard that was perfectly suited to such an animal companion? Don’t have any friends or family who can give your beloved canine friend a new home, so you’re having to surrender him to a shelter and hope for the best, even as your heart is breaking because you genuinely love your fur-child, it’s just that you have *no other options* besides homelessness and you know, funnily enough large-breed dogs don’t do too well living out of a car, either? Well I’m here to make you feel even shittier about it!”
Yes, some surrenders happen for shitty reasons - the well-meaning but poorly-informed parents who get a puppy for a child’s birthday or Christmas, without thinking through the realities of who will actually be taking care of and training the animal (no, young children who promise “I’ll feed him and take him for walks every day!” will not actually remember to follow through on that, and the adults or sometimes older children will end up doing the work, resign yourself to that ahead of time); the people who don’t know how to train an animal not to fuck your shit up and don’t bother to learn, then get mad that the cat is scratching all the furniture/the dog is digging holes in the yard; the people who don’t really *get* that a companion animal (anything bigger than a rodent, anyway) is a MINIMUM 8-10 year commitment, and that animal may be around as long as 20 years, depending on the breed and the individual animal, and just sort of thought it would be nice to have a dog while they’re in X phase of their life but now they’re ready to move on to something different and they don’t want to take the animal with them - but there are honestly a lot of shitty situations in which a person has to make a heartrending choice to surrender a beloved family member because they have no other options.
Look, don’t think I’m heartless to the plight of shelter animals. I’m not. I used to volunteer at a shelter, during the summers when I was home from college. I was the only young, physically-robust volunteer (the other volunteers were mostly retirees who did office stuff), so I would spend most of my volunteering time taking the large-breed dogs out in the runs and playing with them, because I could actually *run* with them and keep up and tussle and be very physical. And I remember how pathetically grateful and happy those poor loves were, to get out of their kennels and go roll in the grass and play fetch and chase with a person for awhile. I wanted to take them all home with me. The shelter I volunteered at was a kill shelter - it was the main county shelter, they didn’t have the option of being a no-kill - and I knew that many of the pups I played with were doomed. I did my best to give them playtime and happiness, and maybe help them be calm and friendly with prospective families instead of nervous and tense with pent-up energy. It was wonderful, and it was terribly sad, and I’m still not allowed to visit the adoption fairs on weekends at Petco because I will try to ADOPT ALL THE THINGS.
But often, the people who surrender their animals need compassion too. And this “There’s no good reason!” bullshit sounds very similar to the “There’s no good reason to eat meat” and “There’s no good reason to terminate a pregnancy” crap we regularly call out as deeply privileged in its assumptions of people’s options. So while we encourage people who absolutely must surrender their pets to try to find a no-kill shelter - or, my personal preference, an independent rescue/foster organization instead of a shelter - let’s also remember not to be privilegey judgmental assholes about it, mmmkay?
PS: Dear OP, this - “I hope that those of you who still have a beating heart and have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head.” - …just…go fuck yourself in the face with broken glass. You basically just said “I hope I triggered the FUCK out of you!” and I’m uh, really not okay with that. Eat shit and I hope you have nightmares for the next month, too.
I don’t understand? The organizers of Occupy Wall Street didn’t invite people based on race. They promoted it on social networking sites. How is it a whites-only protest?
I’m not trying to argue with you, I’m genuinely curious.
I reposted with a clarification that I’m not necessarily condemning the protests themselves for this; I had an extra shitty conversation with someone that dismissed the idea of there not being that many people of color. However, a mass movement does need to be more diverse and more encompassing. I didn’t call it whites-only.
Also, I do really strongly feel, and have a lot of organizing experience behind this, that any kind of movement or campaign or project needs to actively center the needs and experiences of the people marginalized within its scope. If you’re talking about police brutality, people of color and immigrants are profiled and targeted by the police. If you’re talking about unemployment, the unemployment rates that are now a crisis for white people are standard for people of color and in many rural areas. So, no, just inviting everyone is not a sure way to make sure everyone is included, heard, represented, and made to feel welcome.
If I’m invited to be a part of something like this, I need to feel like I can trust the work that’s being done. A group of white people inviting me on facebook is not enough to make me trust that work. A demo that is mostly white is also not enough to make me trust that work, especially if they’re talking about racism but I still don’t feel welcome there. That is my jaded experience from doing a wide range of leftist/anarchist organizing. I am very very skeptical of work that is not making a huge, intentional, and open effort to center people who would otherwise be marginalized. When you don’t fight it, white supremacy takes over, as it is so strongly the default.
So much of this….
Organize a multi layered protest to :
- withdraw most of your funds and go with credit unions or online banks that do not charge you exorbinant fees
- find every old panther, brown beret, queer rage, radical poc elder and start talking about starting community electoral drives TARGETING any elected official who doesn’t support a COMPLETE redress of banking fees REGARDLESS of party. If Jim q republican will vote that people be tried and pay … Fuck it I’ll cross that line. You really wanna save teh middle class , good ole boys CROSS OVER>
- FLOOD SAID ELECTED OFFICIALS WITH LETTERS DETAILING THEIR LOBBYING MISCONDUCT
- Call Warren Buffet and ask him to draft a financial plan don’t care if it works don’t care if it’s plausible but see what he says . PUBLISH IT EVERYWHERE
- hold a day where EVERYBODY EVERYBODY YOU CAN GET YOUR HANDS WITHDRAWS MONEY a
- prepare community gardens etc for supporting each other when the goverment starts threatening you with shut downs and the like
- PAY FOR IT IN CASH and tell folks why
- MAKE SURE TO CONTACT BBC AL JAZEERA LE MONDE and ever non american paper and SHAME THEM into reporting it
Insta attention , allows folks small ways to participate that DO NOT FUCK TEHIR LIVES UP
If you have every intention of hurting your own financial standing and that of countless other people than I suggest you do what this girl is saying. There is horrible corruption in this world, but this goes against every shred of common sense.
Do you want the economy to improve, guys? Quit listening to garbage like this.
How ? How does it go against every shred of common sense. People are unemployed with no money already. And teh terrible corruption in the world isn’t about ” your own financial standing” it’s about people dying in the street.
Oh right this is garbage and not form many people who have held similar successful protests before. And hmmm…….. most of it isn’t even financial
it ‘s
make sure someone who doesn’t represent your interests isn’t elect
make sure peopel KNOW their political lives depend on improving our futures
getting rid of teh bullshit excuse of banks wont give us money so we should allow them to take eve more of it as the charge us usurious rates
and starting infrastructure to support folks who want to take such measures
If your only concern is your financial standing
( which by the by tell me how this affects and if you use the term credit rating I’ll know your self induldged underinformed nitwit who pays no attention because most people are talking about NOT HAVING CREDIT RATINGS WORTH A DAMN ANYWAY)
why are you even talking. Or is it cause I didn’t use terms like fiscal or resource generation or generating artificial market scarcity .
Or an over extended history lesson in how the dust bowl and monopolies led to depression and by forcing popular visible market change connected to politics would force govermental engagement?
But please more glib and unuseful responses to things you obviously don’t know or care much about so you cna be ever so clever in how stupid the rest of us are.
People over money.
Sometimes I think I’m a failure as an activist, and I guilt myself and tell myself I should be rioting on the streets and writing letters to the government and reading the news even though doing so sends me into depression/anxiety attacks. I tell myself…
Hmm…
Hmmm…
I don’t know that I would call any of this activism, “quiet” or otherwise. It’s more like mentorship, or actually just confidence and openness that you hope will rub off on others (as indeed it often does, like the post says). This can change others’ lives for the better, but not all good things fit under the activism umbrella.
Of course said activism umbrella is larger than riots, and God knows it’s larger than signing online petitions and winning arguments on webcomic forums like online social justice newbies sometimes think. (I am making fun of myself here.) Now midwestmountainmama is almost the only person I’ve ever seen actually educating people on what activism can be. She’s talked about how we should learn to feel that THRILL when we see women in a cafeteria stuffing envelopes, like we thrill over riots. That’s what I thought of when I read the term “quiet activism.” It’s a community activity, it’s part of a larger action/strategy to get something specific done, and it builds relationships for future actions.
In contrast, what I see in the OP shows a lot of inner focus and not much else. It’s great to focus on yourself and to be as loving with yourself as you can be. However, I read “being loud about your own pleasure,” or “telling people what you feel” as practices that can easily go too far. Especially if you have a relatively large platform to begin with, like because you are white and/or a man for example. Do you see, I can’t help thinking of feminists like Jessica Valenti who have essentially made an “activist” living out of blogging their personal thoughts and interests, which are honestly pretty shallow and poorly-researched, while being sloppy with other people’s needs, voices, boundaries, histories, and work. For this reason when I read an exhortation to talk about your feelings as social justice praxis without any attempt to delineate where sharing or centering your feelings may be inappropriate, I become wary. In fact, I don’t see anything anywhere in this post that advises discretion based on other people’s needs or signals. I understand that the post probably wasn’t aiming to be comprehensive, but this still seems to me like a big omission.
I simply don’t think any of the things on this list are “activism,” partly because the advice is so self-centered and partly because…it’s not really working toward justice. It’s working toward a better you. Of course I LOVE to see my friends be open, confident, mutually vulnerable, and happy, especially in a world when they were taught they should be otherwise. And it can definitely have a positive influence on other people. But that is not activism in and of itself, especially when you consider like the post says that most of those things can only happen when you’re in a position with enough resources and safety.
I think that the “professional activism” model (and of course the oppressive structures themselves) has resulted in not enough people knowing how to do activism. I certainly don’t know hardly any of it. So it’s a common problem to be unsure and even guilty about whether you’re doing enough. Uhh, but dealing with that guilt and concretely moving toward better activism are two completely different things. I think this post just has the completely wrong solution, to assuage the guilt by calling just being yourself activism and reminding yourself of the positive influence you’ve been, so that then there’s no need to take a hard look at your behavior OR to come up with some ways that you & your community could make activism more doable for you. In fact this way anybody who to your perception gets in the way of you being yourself is obstructing social justice. That’s not conducive to accountability.
I had a really hard time trying to tease out and articulate my thoughts here. I hope all this makes sense.
bolded bit = best summary
it’s ok if you can’t do ALL OF THE ACTIVISM
it’s even ok if you can’t do any social movement work at all — it very possibly says more about the movements’ problems than your own
I know lots of people who do a lot of good in the world without doing any “activism” per se
BUT it’s kind of silly and counterproductive to redefine things that do not have a fairly direct connection to the construction of a transformative social movement as “activism”. what is the point of doing this? doing activism is not the same thing as being a good person.
related note: the “not everyone can participate in a riot or a drawn-out argument with a hostile audience, therefore questioning whether any specific action is tactical and/or ‘activism’ is ableist” thing is a total strawman argument. stop saying that. I haven’t been in anything that could remotely be labelled a riot for years, and most of my best and most useful and even actually most high-status social movement work has been relatively low-key stuff that’s accessible to people with a range of different abilities and energy levels — copywriting, envelope stuffing, stall staffing, arranging/cataloging books, pricing goods for sale, cleaning and tidying community spaces, child-minding, catering, making conversation with people who are new to a space, photocopying, leaflet and zine layout, online promotion, meeting facilitation, radio producing and presenting, etc etc etc.
